


A Young Tal'Vashoth's Thoughts

by danceswithhamsters01



Series: Reddit Prompts [59]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Hunters & Hunting, Internal Monologue, Wishful Thinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 10:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19424584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswithhamsters01/pseuds/danceswithhamsters01
Summary: Based on a prompt from r/dragonage.Young Hestia Adaar is out checking her traps for supper one fine evening.





	A Young Tal'Vashoth's Thoughts

****Prompt 5**** [Visual Prompt](<https://dellamcgee.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/af41c724f51bb97447794e045a07a73f.jpg>)

* * *

She liked to think herself as silent as a ghost as her feet carefully padded through the nighttime forest. Mum had always been silent and efficient when stalking prey. Da said she learned it from the time before they met. Mum never liked talking about the Time Before. Eventually, Hestia stopped asking about it, because the elder Tal’Vashoth would set her lips into a thin line and scowl. Nothing was as frightening as Mum’s scowl, nothing.

The young huntress stopped in a clearing, the light of the full moon making her normally slate gray skin take on a more silvery appearance. She should be checking her traps before predators got to them and made an easy meal out of anything they might’ve captured. They weren’t town-folk who could simply walk to the market and buy several days of food. Well, they _could,_ but it was almost never worth the stares and the whispers. IF they were lucky, the merchants only charged them more than the smaller people paid; elves, humans, and dwarves. If they were not lucky, they found themselves run out of whatever town they’d try to shop in by the militia. Every time they were run out of a town, the words “Kirkwall” and “Qunari” were tossed around; tossed at them along with stones.

Mum hated that word, “Qunari.” She hated it more than anything. The last village the family had been shooed away from, she’d punched the man who’d spat the word at them. He’d lost several teeth. It was a confusing word. People said the word “Qunari” and meant folks that looked like her, like Da and Mum. But what little Mum would say about the matter told her that it was not so.

“ _Qunari can look like anyone, anything. Are there Qunari who are shaped like us? Yes. But there are also Qunari shaped like the Chantry’s Sisters, like the elves who serve nobles. It has nothing to do with your blood, child.”_

She winced as her gut complained, growling for food. The young huntress shook her head and began picking her way to the first of the traps she’d set that morning. It was safer to leave the camp at night when fewer people could see them. Seeing tall, horned people with skin the color of stone armed with arrows and small blades usually made villagers think “bandit” long before “hunter simply tracking down dinner.” The first trap held disappointment. Something had found the kill and taken it away, leaving only bits of fur and drops of blood. The second and third only had hares. Good for soup, but she’d hoped for a little more than that.

 _One last trap to check,_ she thought. _Please don’t be empty!_

Not for the first time, Hestia wondered if doing work other than hunting would make things easier for the family. With money, they could buy a piece of land, build a house, stay in one place year-round. They wouldn’t have to pick up and leave every other week. Da could have a garden again, grow those “pumpkin” things he always talked about, have one of those wooly creatures that went “baa” for a pet. What were they called? Ducks? Cats? No, no… sheep? Yes, that had to be it! That or goats. She shrugged to herself and nocked an arrow while carefully approaching the final trap. Lazy predators wouldn’t think twice about attacking the rightful owner of the kill, _if_ there were anything in the trap to claim, that is.

She snarled when she saw it. A sodding wolf was chewing on the leg of a deer that was caught in a snare _she’d_ set up!

“I hope you enjoyed your last meal!” she whispered angrily as the arrow flew toward the beast. A yelp and whine announced that while her target had been hit, it hadn’t been a killing blow.

An hour later, a form carrying a kill over each shoulder and a pair of hares tied to her belt hummed to herself, retracing her steps back home. Da would enjoy the furry pelt, at least, even if he complained that meat from predators wasn’t as tasty as other animals. Hunger would not bother the small Adaar family for a few days, at least.

Laying in her bedroll early that morning, sleepy from having a full belly, she couldn’t shake thoughts of money, little plots of land, and how best to make those huts made from logs that the human folk called “cabins” from her mind. _One day, I’ll have myself one of those log huts,_ she promised herself before dozing off.


End file.
